We will welcome back Bill Alder for our November ’23 meeting. He last spoke to us on Georges Simenon in August ’21. His focus this time will be on the use of Normandy as a setting by Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola, Proust and contemporary author Annie Ernaux.
Bill Alder has worked in the Department of Languages at the Open University (UK) since 2003, teaching French, writing learning materials and publishing articles on a range of language learning issues. He has a particular interest in crime fiction. He wrote ‘Maigret, Simenon and France’ (2012, Macfarland) and a study in French of Georges Simenon’s novels set wholly or partly in Normandy, ‘Simenon et Maigret en Normandie’ ( 2016 pbk, Presses Universitaires de Liège.) He has also published articles in English and French on different aspects of Simenon’s writings and the Maigret series in British, American and Belgian journals.